RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY (CHAPTER III)

Objectives (What I need to know)

At the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
a. identify the essential elements of Research Design and Methodology;
b. critically identify the Qualitative Research Design of certain research topics; and
c. carry out an outline of a Research Design and Methodology properly.

RESEARCH METHODS/DESIGN
A design in the field of research serves as a blueprint or a skeletal framework of your research study.
According to De Mey (2013), it is a plan that directs your mind to several stages of your research work.
A choice of research design requires you to settle your mind on the purpose, philosophical basis, and
types of data of your research paper including your method of collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and
presenting the data.

Your research design can be distinguished on any of these types of qualitative research that has its own
data collecting technique: case study, ethnography, historical study, phenomenology, and grounded
theory.
1. Case Study
To do a research study based on this research design is to describe a person, a thing, or any
creature on Earth for the purpose of explaining reasons behind the nature of its existence. Your
aim here is to determine why such creature (person, organization, thing, or event) acts, behaves,
occurs, or exists in a particular manner. Usually, a case study centers on an individual or single
subject matter. Your methods of collecting data for this qualitative research design are
interview, observation, and questionnaire. One advantage of case study is its capacity to deal
with a lot of factors to determine the unique characteristics of the entity (Meng 2012; Yin,
2012).
2. Ethnography
A qualitative research design called ethnography involves a study of a certain cultural group or
organization in which you, the researcher to obtain knowledge about the characteristics,
organizational set-up, and relationships of the group members, must necessarily involve
yourself in their group activities. Since this design gives focus to the study of a group of people,
in a way, this is one special kind of a case study. The only thing that makes it different from
the latter is your participation as a researcher in the activities of the group.

Ethnography requires your actual participation in the group members’ activities while a case
study treats you, the researcher, as an outsider whose role is just to observe the group. Realizing
this qualitative research design is living with the subjects in several months; hence, this is
usually done by anthropologists whose interests basically lie in cultural studies (Winn 2014).
3. Historical Study
This qualitative research design tells you the right research method to determine the reasons
for changes or permanence of things in the physical world in a certain period (i.e., years,
decades, or centuries). What is referred to in the study as time of changes is not a time shorter
than a year but a period indicating a big number of years. Obviously, historical study differs
from other research designs because of this one element that is peculiar to it, the scope. The
scope or coverage of a historical study refers to the number of years covered, the kind of events
focused on, and the extent of new knowledge or discoveries resulting from the historical study.
A clue about the scope is usually reflected by the title of the study such as the following
examples:
✓ A Five-Year Study of the Impact of the K-12 Curriculum on the Philippine Employment
System
✓ The Rise and Fall of the Twenty-Year Reign of Former Philippine President, Ferdinand
E. Marcos
✓ Filipino-Student Activism from the Spanish Era to the Contemporary Period
✓ Telephones from the Nuclear Era to the Digital Age
The data collecting techniques for a study following a historical research design are biography
or autobiography reading, documentary analysis, and chronicling activities. This last technique,
chronicling activities, makes you interview people to trace series of events in the lives of people
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 in a span of time. However, one drawback of historical study, is the absence, or loss of complete
and well-kept old that may hinder the completion of the study.
4. Phenomenology
A phenomenon is something you experience on Earth as a person. It is a sensory experience
that makes you perceive or understand things that naturally occur in your life such as death,
joy, friendship, caregiving, defeat, victory, and the like. This qualitative research design makes
you follow a research method that will let you understand the ways of how people go through
inevitable events in their lives. You are prone to extending your time in listening to people's
recount of their significant experiences to be able to get a clue or pattern of their techniques in
coming to terms with the positive or negative results of their life experiences. Comparing these
two qualitative research designs, phenomenology and ethnography, the first aims at getting a
thorough understanding of an individual's life experiences for this same person's realistic
dealings with hard facts of life while the second aims at defining, describing, or portraying a
certain group of people possessing unique cultural traits.
Focusing on people's meaning and making strategies in relation to their life experiences,
phenomenology as a qualitative research design finds itself relevant or useful to people such as
teachers, nurses, guidance counselors, and the like, whose work entails giving physical and
emotional assistance or relief to people. Unstructured interview is what this research design
directs you to use in collecting data (Paris 2014; Winn 2014).
5. Grounded Theory
A research study adhering to a grounded theory research design aims at developing a theory to
increase your understanding of something in a psycho-social context. Such study enables you
to develop theories to explain sociologically and psychologically influenced phenomena for
proper identification of a certain educational process. Occurring in an inductive manner, a
research study following a grounded theory design takes place in an inductive manner, wherein
one basic category of people's action and interactions gets related to a second category; to third
category; and so on, until a new theory emerges from the previous data. (Gibson 2014; Creswell
2012).
A return to the previous data to validate a newly found theory is a zigzag sampling. Moving
from category to category, a study using a grounded theory design is done by a researcher
wanting to know how people fair up in a process-bound activity such as writing. Collecting
data based on this qualitative research design called grounded theory is through formal,
informal, or semi-structured interview, as well as analysis of written works, notes, phone calls,
meeting proceedings, and training sessions (Picardie 2014).

POPULATION/RESPONDENTS/SAMPLE
The researcher has to explain how and where the population/respondents are taken.

Population – refers to the group of people, items, or units under investigation.

Census – is obtained by collecting information about each member of a population.
Sample – is obtained by collecting information only about some members of a “population”.
Sampling Frame – refers to the list of people from which the sample is taken. It should be
comprehensive, complete, and up-to-date.

RESEARCH INSTRUMENT
The research instrument either questionnaire, test, interviews, observation schedule, or rating scale
must be described on how it is being designed and used by the researcher. Each part of the instrument
must be clearly stated and discussed. There are many methods to collect data, depending on your
research design and the methodologies employed in your research study. The following are the
techniques in gathering data for quantitative research:

Interviews – The use of interview of a data-collection method begins with the assumption that the
participants’ perspectives are meaningful, knowable, and can be made explicit, and that their
perspectives affect the success of the project.

Questionnaires – Questionnaires help to extract data from the respondents. It serves as a standard
guide for the interviewers who need to ask the questions in exactly the same way. Questionnaire is also
an important part in collecting data because it is the medium in which responses are recorded to
facilitate data analysis.
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Observations – It is a way of gathering data by watching behavior, events, or nothing physical
characteristics in their natural setting. If respondents are unwilling or unable to provide data through
questionnaires or interviews, observation is a method that requires little from the individuals to whom
you need the data.

Chapter III also known as “Research Design and Methodology” focuses on three (3) parts which are:
Research Methods/Design wherein the researchers will explain what method/design they used in their
research. In this chapter, we can also see the presentation of number of their respondents, target
population, and the sampling method. Lastly, the research instrument that is consists of three (3) types:
interview, questionnaire, and observation. Keep in mind that a quantitative research uses survey
questionnaire as the instrument.

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